


Breaking Up Is Hard To Do (But Getting Together Again Is Worth The Pain)

by amanda_jolene



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 19:55:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1995816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amanda_jolene/pseuds/amanda_jolene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Breaking up to make up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking Up Is Hard To Do (But Getting Together Again Is Worth The Pain)

She’s been unreachable for days. 

She’s been with him but not really. Body beside him but her mind has slithered off to some dark corner he can’t shed a light on and no amount of joking or kisses or words traced on her skin can coax her out. 

Finn is helpless and he’s trying to hold on to himself and her but he’s just a young lad and every smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, every time he has to repeat himself feels like he’s being backed into a corner by a bully with no name who hits below the belt. 

It’s the eighth day of this and knows he’s at his breaking point and he should just stay home and cool down but his heart is softly cajoling him out because tonight might be different. 

But it’s not. He has to keep calling her name, repeating himself. He gives up and rolls a cigarette angrily. 

“I’m sorry, what?”

He shakes his head because he’s not fucking asking her the same damn question for the third time. 

“Finn?” 

“I asked,” he lights his cigarette. “Where you’ve been all day.”

“At Kester’s office.”

“All day?”

She’s defensive. “Yes, all day.” 

“Well, good to know you’re talking to someone.” They are two mad cats, backs raised, hissing lowly at each other. He blows smoke towards her and she’s out of her seat and out the door. Finn is right on her heels, spinning her around in the alley. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You wouldn’t get it, Finn! “

He barks out a laugh. “Right, course not. Because you’re the only one who ever has problems.”

“You knew when we started dating-“ 

“I didn’t sign up for this!” And at that moment, he means it. He thought being in love was supposed to be glorious like the movies made it out to be so he thinks maybe this isn’t love. All he wants is to hold her and kiss her but she’s got all these hang ups about affection in public and having sex with the light on and leaning her body into his and he’s tried to be patient but his spine doesn’t feel strong enough and he’s just had it. “I mean it, Rae. I can’t keep this shit up.” 

She’s crying and she’s shaking and so mad her face turns red and she seethes, “This is so called shit is my life, Finn. And if you can’t handle it, then I don’t want to see you anymore.” 

She walks away and even though he felt something terrible unfurl in the pit of his stomach, he lets her go. Because if couldn’t help her into the light then he just needed to stay away.

He’s fine the first week of their break up because he’s in denial. But then his heart starts whispering softly to him and his spine laments that he was strong enough and he lays in his bedroom floor and prays he hasn’t fucked everything to hell because all of those movies are full of shit and he is so in love with her he feels like he’s dying. 

The eighth day, he calls her and her mother slams the phone down when he asks for Rae. He calls again and Karim call him an ‘azzhull’ and screams at him in French. Finn listens until Karim hangs up because he deserves it. He is an asshole and he deserves a beating and he’d take it all if he could just take that night back. 

He catches her at the hospital on the tenth day and she begs him to leave her alone. She’s crying with her arms stretched out to keep him from coming closer and he’s got his hand up in surrender, begging, “Please, Rae. Please, let’s talk this out, please.” 

A bald man bursts through a side door, his mouth set in a hard line. He pulls Rae behind him, pushes her towards the door and Finn knows this is Kester (and he’s hoping he’ll knock him out).

“Listen very carefully to me. Men, especially punk ass teenage boys like you, have no business handling a woman’s heart. Women are not prizes. You don’t get to hold them over your head and show your prize off to all your pals until it breaks and you realize it’s not exactly what you wanted. Things, relationships, don’t work that way. It’s time and effort and work,” Kester looks him up and down, shakes his head. “You’re just a kid, though. What could you possibly know about love?” 

She stops coming to the pub, flits around him in school and their friends are becoming worried because Finn looks tired and anxious all the time now. 

“Tell her to call me, please,” Finn whispers to Archie.

On the 16th day, her voice is soft, cautious on the other end. “Hi.”

“Rae?” 

“I know it’s late…” 

“No, no. It’s fine. I’m so glad you called.” There’s silence for a moment and Finn whispers, “I am so sorry, Rae. I love you so much.” 

“I have to go.” 

He hangs on to the phone for a very long time. 

There are a lot of soft late night phone conversations after that. Short at first, growing longer until one day he realizes they’ve been talking for 5 hours. He ends every call with ‘I love you’ and she never says it back but it’s important that she knows how he feels, that he’ll never get tired of saying it. 

On the 32nd day of their break up, he tells her he’s going to a party with the gang and she asks if she can come. He picks her up and Linda stares at him so hard he has to look away and Rae looks beautiful and timid and Finn realizes he is just a punk ass teenager, just like Kester said.   
They’re half-way to the party when she traces P-U-L-L-O-V-E-R on his back. She pulls the helmet off and she’s telling him this is a bad idea because she can’t be his friends and he tells her he doesn’t want to be friends either. 

If this were a movie, they’d fall into each other’s arms and make love in the field beside them but Finn has already vowed to never watch that make believe shit again. Together they roll out the tapestry of their relationship and mend what they can on the side of the road and make plans to fix the bigger stuff with time and patience and communication. He holds her in his arms until it’s time to go home and when he says “I love you”, she says it back. 

They kiss on her front porch until her mum tells her to get inside. He faces Linda and once Rae is inside, he tells her, “I’m sorry. This won’t ever happen again.”

And it never does because Finn tucks her heart safely in his chest and never takes it out again.


End file.
